Meet Comm Professor Seth Goldman 

By Nusrah Azeez and Christine Souaiden

Please tell us who you are and your journey to UMass 

I am Seth Goldman, I am a professor in the Department of Communication and the Commonwealth Honors College here at UMass Amherst. I went to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school and got a PhD in Communication. Before that, I went to George Washington University in Washington, DC, which is really where my interest in Communication and politics sparked. Washington, DC is filled with people who are trying to change the world in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons. It is a place where, if you are a college-aged person, you find that there are a lot of options for engaging in the world and expressing yourself and what you care about and pushing for change in a way that feels very plausible. It can be a bit overwhelming. As you can imagine, in DC every possible issue is available. I quickly became deeply embedded in a variety of activist issues and organizations to the point where it was a different issue every night of the week. Monday it was Feminist Majority, Tuesday was Labor Union, Wednesday was the Gay Pride Organization… Every issue had a group of really passionate people behind it. In Washington, DC, you are close to The White House and Congress, folks are accessible. I remember I was a student working with the LGBTQ group on campus, hosting a panel on the future of LGBTQ rights, to my surprise we got a member of congress there. A high-ranking person from a major LGBTQ rights organization agreed to show up. It was a signal that you can make a change if you care and you push doors that you may think are closed but are open. I went the journalistic route for a while, went the activist route for a while, insider route like interning for Senator Kennedy, I worked on student government and did research. Ultimately, I decided that research was the best fit for me. The key is to take your interests and skills and figure out what works best for you and what kind of life you want to have. Research and orientation led me to grad school, after my PhD I got a Postdoc in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania and then I was fortunate enough to get a job offer here at UMass. You never know the path life will take you, I grew up in Norwood, Massachusetts. I did not predict my life would go the direction it went. What you think you can do is almost certainly a massive underestimation of yourself and what is possible.

How long have you been teaching?

I have been at the University of Massachusetts for eight years. I did some teaching when I was a postdoctoral student. So we can conservatively say eight years, generously say ten years.

What are some of the classes you have taught here at UMass? And which one is your favorite to teach? 

Here at UMass, I teach mostly undergraduate classes because I am jointly appointed in the honors college. I teach three undergraduate classes that are in Communication, two of them are honors classes as well. The class that I teach are Comm 209 LGBT Politics in the Media; Comm 325 Race, Media, and Politics, and an upper-level class Comm 494 Media & Prejudice which is about how media can not only play the well-known role perpetuating prejudice that we are all aware of, but also how media can serve as an important point of contact for people from different groups and backgrounds. It can play a significant role in how to reduce biases. I also teach a PhD course that is also called Race, Media & Politics. This class is fun to teach because we get into the readings and have discussions. I am not sure which one would be my favorite to teach. My undergraduate Race, Media & Politics class that I taught last semester was really fun and stimulating, especially with current events of the last couple of years, the racial justice protests, Black Lives Matter, and the elections going on. Everyone has been especially engaged which makes it interesting. The LGBT class is also really fun, especially as a queer-identified person, it is nice to discuss issues that I am interested in. The Media & Prejudice class is right down my alley, my research focuses on how media can influence people’s stereotypes and prejudices towards different groups. I like that class because of the positive take on it, which is not to deny the negative by any means. We spend a lot of time understanding the problems we face in society, but I am not sure if we spend an equal amount of time coming up with better versions and solutions. We discuss things like if you were to design an advertisement campaign, how could you include some prosocial messages? And what is the representation we want? So I cannot pick a favorite class that I teach.

What has your work experience at UMass taught you?

The biggest thing I have learned is the importance of patience with one’s self and with others, it is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day deadlines, there’s always more to do, and always racing from one task to the next. It is important to take a step back and focus on the human interaction we are having at any given moment. It may be kind of cheesy but it is the biggest counteraction I have come up with in response to the “Go! Go! Go!” pressure that we all fall under.

Do you have any publications that would be of interest to Comm undergrads?

I co-wrote a book called The Obama Effect, it is an academic book but it is more accessible than an academic journal article. It deals with controversial issues, with a focus on how we can better understand pathways to social change and positive movements forward. The book tries to explain a fascinating and unexpected surprising trend during the 2008 presidential campaign when Senator Barack Obama was running for President. Even before he became President we had the first Black nominee for President for a major political party in the US. We analyzed a survey for my dissertation that showed a decline in levels of racial stereotyping among the mass public and white people. It begged an explanation. It certainly was not the end of racism, but it declined and if we want to understand how to reduce prejudice, explaining it when it happens is important. The findings show that Obama’s campaign had unprecedented levels of coverage. The Obama family was a shock to the system of racist media representations that suddenly was being plastered wall-to-wall with representations which were counter-stereotypical: Well-liked Black families and Obama at the top of the democratic ticket. It has significant beneficial effects. Not permanent and not complete but I think it is interesting to highlight that if you change the representations, it has a real effect. It is often hard to identify those effects because there is so much going on in the world, but a presidential campaign is unique because it kind of takes over the news media, and the unusual amount of attention people pay to the news during that time. I think it would be of interest to students, whether you agree with it or not, it raises a lot of conversations about the nature of prejudice, change, and media influence. 

What is your favorite meal at UMass?

My favorite meal used to be BiBimBap. It is a Korean rice bowl that is spicy, with a lot of fermented things topped with a fried egg. They don’t make it anymore. It used to be at Blue Wall next to the Pho station.

What do you like to do in your free time?

In my free time, I enjoy a good mix of lazy indoor activities and active outdoor activities. I was very excited when movie theaters were accessible again. I love going and sitting in a dark room, ideally alone or with one other person, and watching movies, even a bad action movie. Preferably in the middle of the day, on a weekday that always feels very transgressive. If you are in school or working at a school, you may have a random Wednesday off, and that’s when there may not be anyone else in the theater, which is pretty cool. I also really like hiking out here in Western Massachusetts, there is a lot of great nature. I like to relax and get some fresh air. I will admit that I spend a lot of time, especially during the last couple of years, binging things on every possible streaming service. When you study Communication you can just call it research, you have to know what’s going on in the culture. I also enjoy cooking a good meal or going out for a good meal.

What advice do you have for Communication students?

My advice would be to let yourself follow what you are interested in. It is a simple thing that you’ve probably heard a hundred times already, but it is very important. The mentality of “I should not do this,” “This is not what my parents want me to do,”or “This does not seem plausible,” I would say  to follow your passions and what makes you curious. Even if they are challenging. I have had a lot of odd jobs in my life and some of them have been hard, but you can always do something that you care about that is challenging, which is a lot better. Find your interests, but more importantly find people who have succeeded in doing what you are interested in, and ask them how to do that. You would be surprised at how many people would be willing and happy to help and take a stake in your success because they take joy in it as well. People that have achieved something often want to find meaning in supporting people coming up, especially if the person approaching them is polite and respectful.